Explaining the Unexplained: Paranormal Encounters

Most people think there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in man's philosophy. Some people believe religion answers their questions about life after death and can explain occurrences physical based science can't decipher, but some people believe in spirits or the paranormal. Whatever you believe in there aren't many people who feel comfortable entering a graveyard after dark, which implies we're all more than a little bit wary of ghosts and the paranromal.

The way I see it we're all full of energy, that's what starts us off and when we wear out our individual energy doesn't just dissolve, that's our own residue and it's other people's residual energy - now paranormal energy - we're feeling and seeing when we talk about encountering ghosts or spirits. A paranormal encounter doesn't only mean seeing something we can't explain, it could also be a feeling, a chill, repeatedly experiencing cold in a particular place, hearing unexplained sounds or smelling something you can't place. Lots of people experience the sensation of someone watching them, and the way I see it that counts as having a paranormal encounter.

I didn't start out answering my paranormal queries this way, but after a series of unexplainable events I came to this paranormal explanation, as like Sherlock Holmes I deduced that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. By sharing the facts with you now I'll let you make your own mind up.

When I was 22 I spent my university holidays working as a house painter. I've always been a pragmatic person and considered my nerves pretty steely. I was working on a block of flats with two other people and one morning I got there first and on my way up stairs I felt like someone was following me quite closely. I turned around but there was no one there. I didn't mention it to the others but on my way back down the stairs I felt a shiver. I thought maybe I'd been around the paint too long but the same thing happened the following day, on the way up a feeling of being followed and on the way down a sudden chill. This went on for four more days until the end of the week, when, after a few at the pub I came out with it and told the guys I'd been working with. One of them laughed it off but the other went a bit white and said he'd felt the same thing and had mentioned it to the woman whose flat we were working on, who'd told him an old woman had slipped and fallen down the stairs to her death the month before. Was the feeling we were experiencing something to do with her paranormal remains?

After that I started to seek out places which were thought to be haunted or to have paranormal connections to see if I felt anything. I was trying to understand it more than prove or disprove my experience at this point but I found that in some places I did feel a paranormal something and in others nothing. Each place I visited a few times trying to test both myself and the paranormal sensation or 'spirit' and find out if there was a more scientific explanation. In the end I went with Sherlock Holmes and decided that there must be something else to the world and set about unravelling it.

Hopefully you're now more open to the idea of a paranormal encounter, in which case this list of places where multiple paranormal encounters have been clocked may be of some use to you. Being receptive is vital but before you go trumpeting about your paranormal encounter consider alternative explanations - hysteria only reduces your chance of being taken seriously. Doing some paranormal researching into previously reported paranormal encounters allows you to compare your paranormal experience and potentially understand whose residual energy you may have felt. And though they're atmospheric parnormal reside, it's unlikely, by my reckoning, that you're going to run into a ghost in a graveyard. Very few people actually die there and I can't imagine many people who'd want their paranormal residue to hang around haunting their own bones.